


Best Served Cold

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: The Other Side Of The Coin [3]
Category: Primeval
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-25
Updated: 2013-06-25
Packaged: 2018-03-08 22:52:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3226481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Claudia and Lester discuss daughters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Best Served Cold

**Author's Note:**

> Timestamp to Sparks Fly Upwards, Stars, Hide Thy Fires or A Second Better, depending on which you’ve read most recently (or which you’ve read at all! Tip: if you’re interested, Stars, Hide Thy Fires and A Second Better are a lot shorter). This is set in the same alternate timeline Stars, Hide Thy Fires is, where Nick Cutter died in the Permian, not Tom Ryan, and Tom Ryan came back through the anomaly with no memory of Claudia Brown, his closest friend. Lester’s daughter Liz later got parked in this timeline through no fault of her own, and – since her counterpart in that timeline was dead – assumed the name Lisa Lewis and occupied Claudia and Ryan’s spare room for a few months. The title is, of course, from the classic aphorism ‘revenge is a dish best served cold’. With thanks to Bella, who kindly screened this for crazy.

             “Claudia!” Sir James said, sounding genuinely pleased to see her and looking particularly venerable.

 

            Claudia smiled at him, and accepted an air-kiss on each cheek. He must be feeling genial, she thought to herself. Very genial. The garden party she was at was the kind of thing she would have expected him to hate, but he seemed to be in a very mellow mood despite it. “James. How are you?”

 

            “Very well, thank you. Surprisingly, with Jon blowing the place up every second Tuesday.” An affectionate expression crossed his face, and he nodded in Lyle’s direction. Claudia wasn’t exactly shocked to see Lyle raiding the open-air bar; after all, he was her husband’s best friend, godfather to her daughter, and she knew him quite well. 

 

            Lester, on the other hand, she hadn’t seen for years. He had visited her and Ryan’s house once and visibly recoiled from a picture on the mantelpiece: a tall, tanned, hardbitten young woman, wearing a rainbow scarf and smiling hesitantly. They hadn’t asked him back, and she’d found excuses not to visit his flat.

 

            “I heard he got promotion,” Claudia said, and delivered a polite compliment. She’d known for months – actually, she’d known before Lyle, as Colonel Preston had dropped several deliberately indiscreet hints. Just as she’d dropped several deliberately indiscreet and completely improper hints in front of Preston about the fact she’d chosen to run for the top job at the ARC. “And I also heard about your knighthood – congratulations, James, long overdue.”

 

            Lester flushed with pride. Claudia did him justice: it was certainly more to do with his partner’s achievements than his own. “Thank you. Well, your turn soon, Claudia. Do you use your maiden name at work still?”

 

            “Yes,” Claudia said, and forbore from adding ‘of course’.

 

            “Dame Claudia Brown has quite a ring. But so does Claudia Brown, CEO.” Lester nodded. “You’re in with a very decent chance.”

 

            “Thank you,” Claudia said politely.

 

            “Will your next job be your first full-time one since your daughter was born? I’ve heard good things about that job-share you were doing in the Home Office.”

 

            “No, I’ve been in full-time work for the last year – but thank you for that,” Claudia said. “Please spread those good things around, if you believe them. There are still a lot of doubters out there.”

 

            “I remember how difficult my ex-wife found it when our children were born,” Lester said. “I had hoped things had changed.”

 

            “They have, of course, a great deal,” Claudia responded smoothly, sensing unfriendly ears flapping in the rest of the garden. “But not as much as some people would like to think.” 

 

            “Your little girl would be… three years old now? A dreadful age.”

 

            “Four,” Claudia said, and smiled wryly. “Three was lousy, but Tom was fantastic with her. He never lost patience.” She fished in her handbag, and eventually retrieved the picture of her daughter she carried with her: a small girl with dark blonde hair in two lopsided plaits, a square face, and imploring hazel eyes, strikingly dressed in green dungarees and a lot of glitter and glue.

 

            Lester made all the right noises and detected all the usual likenesses, including the most subtle – the little girl had, very distinctly, the same tilt to her head as Tom Ryan did when he was torn between exasperation, fury and total confusion, an expression he’d worn on a daily basis when working for the anomaly project. Then he looked up at Claudia and said: “I’m sorry, I can’t remember what you called her. I _should_ know, since Jon swore to renounce evil and adhere to Christian precepts in her name – a losing bet if ever I heard one – but it’s slipped my mind.”

 

            “Elizabeth Hero,” Claudia said promptly, and, unable to resist twisting the knife, added: “After two of the most redoubtable women we ever knew. It was going to be Hero Elizabeth, but we thought it would get confusing when she was old enough to answer to it – Hero is my mother’s name. She’s actually mostly called Zilly – my daughter, not my mother! – because Elizabeth is awfully long for such a little thing, and one of her cousins can’t say Elizabeth, it came out as Zilly, and Zilly rather stuck. James, that’s a very interesting shade of green you’ve gone.”

 

            She couldn’t inject the necessary note of concern into her voice. She was too pleased to see that Lester knew exactly which of several redoubtable Elizabeths Tom and Claudia had named their daughter after.

 

            “I’m only surprised you didn’t name her Lisa,” Lester retorted, making a reasonable recovery.

 

            “No, that would have been odd,” Claudia said serenely. She glanced up at the lowering sky and started to manoeuvre them away from the main clusters of the party, towards the shelter of a gazebo mostly occupied by a modern sculpture in awful taste. “Do you think it’s going to rain? I think it might rain. We thought that having one mouthy teenager called Lisa to live with us was quite enough, although we did consider Lewis, you know, for a boy.”

 

            Lester flinched. “The forecast did allow for showers,” he noted, in a completely level voice.

 

            Claudia was nearly, but not quite, satisfied with his discomfort. “It was taking care of Lisa that really made us think we could handle kids. Neither of us was really sure we wanted them before.”

 

            Lester didn’t flinch this time. He held Claudia’s eyes and said: “So this is why neither you nor Tom are talking to me. In a personal rather than professional capacity, that is - neither of you have ever been anything less than professional.”

 

            “I think both of us saw a side of you we didn’t like and the resulting fall-out,” Claudia said coolly, keeping her voice low. “We understand why you behaved as you did, but we saw the impact on Lisa, too. Lisa _and_ Jamie. Is he still looking for his sister? I know he must suspect the truth. He was close enough to the ARC to have heard Connor’s theories about alternate universes years before they were published – and Connor always used Lisa as the test case for those. Even if he never slipped when talking about Lisa’s origins, Jamie is bright enough to have connected the woman named Lisa from an alternate universe who looked so much like his dead sister with his _actual_ dead sister.”

 

            Lester’s shoulders slumped infinitesimally. “I’m not going to dig up private family discussions for you. What are you expecting me to do, Claudia? Apologise to someone who isn’t here? Flagellate myself for no good reason?”

 

            “The former would be a good start, James.” Claudia shook her head. “It took me a long time to realise – much longer than it should have done – but I can’t believe you haven’t noticed. You never said sorry to Lisa. You only said sorry to me.” She halted, and timed a deadly little pause the way she’d learnt from him. “For the inconvenience, I believe.”

 

            She smiled toothily at Lester and walked away, towards the main press of people.

 

            Jon Lyle intercepted her before she got there. “What the hell were you talking about, Claudia? James looks like death warmed up.”

 

            “Oh,” Claudia said, and smiled breezily at him. “Daughters, that’s all.”


End file.
